Boy poisons himself trying to be X-Men hero

Ateenage boy injected himself with mercury in a bid to emulate his favourite superhero. The 15-year-old boy wanted to emulate the X-Men hero, Mercury, but only ended up with painful ulcers that refused to heal after the injections. He is also said to have allowed spiders to bite him, so he could gain superpowers like Spider-Man.

The case was documented in the National Centre for Biotechnology Information in the United States and states that a boy visited medics in India with “multiple non-healing ulcers on the left forearm”. Doctors carried out toxicology tests to establish that the boy hadn’t poisoned himself after he confessed that he had administered the injections in a bid to obtain superpowers.

The report states: “The patient did not develop clinical signs of chronic poisoning, proving that subcutaneous mercury injection has a low risk of systemic toxicity, and that histopathology plays an important role in diagnosis.”